Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Tonight Jacco Zwetsloot will be giving a lecture for the
Royal Asiatic Society titled "The Long-Forgotten World War II Prisoner of War Camps in Korea." Here is a summary of tonight's lecture:

As an (unwilling) part of the Japanese Empire, Korea was involved in
World War Two. We have all heard of the conscripts, the forced labor,
and the comfort women. However, fighting did not actually occur on
Korean soil. Soviet forces arrived in Korea from Manchuria in mid to
late August, and US troops made landfall in Incheon on September 8, 1945
to receive the Japanese surrender and disarm and demobilize Japan’s
military.

One aspect of Korean history during that
period that has been forgotten – seemingly by all sides – is the
approximately 1,500 Allied Prisoners of War who were held in Korea from
September 1942, only a couple of months after the last non-Axis foreign
civilians had been forcibly deported from Korea by ship. The first
Allies to be imprisoned here were British and Australian troops from the
fall of Singapore. They were joined towards the end of the war by
American soldiers captured in the Philippines, after they were initially
held in the notorious “hell ships,” as well as in Japan. In all, three
camps were operated, run by Japanese officers and staffed by Korean
conscripts and civilians. A few POWs died, but most were rescued and
brought home in September 1945.

More details can be found here. The present day location of these camps in Seoul, Incheon, and Hungnam (North Korea) will be revealed, and I'll probably be speaking briefly about helping discover the location of Seoul's camp. Just for fun, here are a few photos:

The lecture will be held at 7:30 pm tonight (Tuesday) in the Residents'
Lounge on the 2nd floor of the Somerset Palace in Seoul, which is
north of Jogyesa Temple, and is 7,000 won for non-members and free
for members.